Average daily rates (ADRs) for Macau hotel rooms were generally between “15 percent to 40 percent” lower for the coming Chinese New Year holidays compared to the same festival in 2024, indicates a Morgan Stanley survey done “4 days before the upcoming holiday.
Despite signs of “lower average daily rates… visitation could be stronger” said the institution, wrote Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd analysts Praveen Choudhary and Gareth Leung in a memo.
Morgan Stanley found the biggest year-on-year softening in prices in average daily rate for a standard room, as occurring at the Venetian Macao, at HKD2,488 (about US$320), down circa 60 percent on Chinese New Year 2024.
The smallest percentage of rate reduction year-on-year measured in a luxury hotel in a casino resort was 15 percent, to HKD7,188. Three of the Macau gaming sector’s resort hotels – Parisian Macao, W Hotel Macau, and Andaz Macau – actually showed year-on-year growth in average daily rates, ranging from 6 percent up to 15 percent, according to the institution.
China’s State Council has declared the latest mainland holiday for lunar new year – this time marking the Year of the Snake – as an eight-day period running from January 28 to February 4 inclusive. Last year’s festivities were between February 10 and 17 inclusive.
Volume of tourism business versus its actual value to the city’s casino industry is a consistent theme in the work of investment analysts.
On Friday Macau’s tourism boss Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes said this Chinese New Year visitor volume was forecast to reach “185,000″ daily on average.
Morgan Stanley noted – citing an announcement last week – that visitor volume from Guangdong’s Zhuhai next-door to Macau, was up circa 26 percent year-on-year in the first half of January, after policy easing on mainland exit visas for residents of that mainland city.
“Zhuhai was 10 percent and 12 percent,” respectively of mainland China visitor volume to Macau in the first 11 months of 2024 and the pre-pandemic trading year of 2019, added the institution.
Chinese New Year trade uplift this time may extend into February, as February 1 and 2 fall as weekend days immediately after the main festivities.
The Morgan Stanley analysts observed regarding average daily gross gaming revenue (GGR): “We expect January [daily] GGR at plus 1 percent year-on-year, at MOP628 million [US$78.3 million]; February GGR at plus 7 percent year-on-year at MOP709 million; and January and February GGR [combined] at plus 4 percent year-on-year, at MOP667 million,” or “78 percent of 2019.”
The Macau hotel-sector occupancy rate for the upcoming Chinese New Year festivities might beat the 95 percent average for the equivalent holiday period last year, said Andy Wu Keng Kuong, Macau Travel Industry Council president, in comments quoted on Monday by local media.
